The closer you are to the date of the summer solstice, it seems to gradually take up to 10 hours for the sun to set. Yet, the sun doesn’t begin to rise at 2am. Why is that?
In: Planetary Science
What we call noon is generally *not* when the sun peaks. Before time zones and daylight saving time, it used to be, but it isn’t anymore.
Time zones choose a specific line of longitude and let noon follow the old rules on that line of longitude. The time zone, however, typically extends *westward* from that line, and because the earth rotates to the east, the sun rises later and sets later the further west you are of the time zone line. If you happen to be near the western edge, this can be almost a full hour later. So daytime on, say, the autumn equinox isn’t 6 am to 6 pm, it’s more like 6:45 am to 6:45 pm.
Daylight saving time messes with this further by making the *clock* an hour later, essentially gaslighting us into believing it’s later in the day than it actually is. So now, during it, daytime runs 7:45 am to 7:45 pm and the sun is highest at 1:45 pm and when the clock reeds “noon”, it’s what the old rules would have called 10:15 am.
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